Any Way to Induce Ketosis Faster? Ketosis salts?

ucimigrate

Active member
For some reason, I have always failed at ketosis diets.

It takes so long to get into ketosis, I never lose much weight while in ketosis, and I have the worst fatigue while in it.

1. For me to show those ketones, using the albeit flawed method of Ketostix, it takes six days of ZERO carbs to do so.

I even asked my general practitioner about it. She researched and said ketosis was a bell curve; if I am on the extreme of the bell curve, it says so.

2. I am jealous of some people who actually have more energy while into ketosis, can even eat some fruit, brown rice, and baked potato, and still have massive weight loss on modified carb drops or ketosis diets, etc.

3. What can I do?

4. I have heard of supplements like "Exongenous Ketosis Salts", etc.

Do they have any effect at getting someone into ketosis faster?
 
It can take me a full two weeks to get into keto sis when I fall back off the wagon. what helps me is to make sure I am not overdoing the protein intake and I find that intermittent fasting helps speed it up. Once I am back to being keto adapted, I can have a bit more carbs and still not get kicked out, I usually strive for 50 net grams per day, but once adapted I can have fruit, berries and apples mostly, even some white rice or plantains and still be good. I usually time the carb intake around a workout so technically i guess that would be a CKD/TKD, but everybody is different.

As for the keto salt supplements, although they might make you register faster but it kind of feels like cheating to me in that your body must switch and become efficient at generating ketones, that is where the keto flu comes from. The only supplement that i find that helps and that i notice a difference with is MCT oil (like Perfect Keto Salted Caramel, it's good in coffee)

As for the weight loss, the first keto diet that I stuck to for years had me drop the fat super fast and i was able to keep it off and kind of go back and forth between primal/keto. Now that i am getting on in years, i have noticed that even with keto i am struggling a bit, i guess our body chemistry changes so YMMV.

There is some good reading on it at Sisson's site, and some trouble shooting info if you poke around. Invalid Link Removed
 
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Resolve10 said:
Dude. You don't like keto don't do it. You don't have to do keto to lose weight.

If it sucks and you can't do it, it won't be sustainable and you won't lose weight or gain it back easy, so just go with a different approach.
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The same guy who finds doing IF too difficult, but made a thread on IF and following that lifestyle.
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The same answer from that thread applies here:
You get results from
1) Sustaining a deficit or surplus
2) Adhering to what works best for your lifestyle & schedule
3) Rinse/Repeat the above two

How you choose to do that is a personal preference.
 
The ketone salts are a waste. Ive done plenty of keto and all those salts are good for is for turing the piss strips purple... but thats meaningless.

As said above, if keto isn’t for you then dont do it.
 
Thanks, guys.

Honestly, I am just jealous that weight is so slow to come off, even when I really do stick hard to a caloric deficit plan.

I am jealous, and even angry, at people who drop weight super fast with IF, keto, or any other plan.

Some of my friends lost 5 lbs a week with IF. Another lost something like 21 lbs of fat, in 12 days, of a modified carb drop/ketosis plan...no exercise and probably 200 grams of carbs per day.
 
ucimigrate said:
Thanks, guys.

Honestly, I am just jealous that weight is so slow to come off, even when I really do stick hard to a caloric deficit plan.

I am jealous, and even angry, at people who drop weight super fast with IF, keto, or any other plan.

Some of my friends lost 5 lbs a week with IF. Another lost something like 21 lbs of fat, in 12 days, of a modified carb drop/ketosis plan...no exercise and probably 200 grams of carbs per day.
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You do realize that not everyone is made the same correct?
What one person does and what you does means nothing. You need to find the best plan for you
If you don't like IF and find it hard to follow, don't do it
If you don't respond well to keto and work better off carbs.. then eat carbs

Set your deficit
Be consistent
Rinse/Repeat

What others do is great and all, but you can't just mimic what others do and expect to get their results. That is not how the fitness industry works. As much as it is nice to pick up a magazine and see what X person does or Y person does. That doesn't always mean you will yield the same results.
 
Thanks.

1. I understand the principal: I need to look at my individual situation, my individual history, and see what works for my individual self.

Doing what another person did is a world of difference.

2. I agree, this is easier said than done. Many charlatans saying "functional medicine" etc. do that. The field claims to use tests to personalize medicine, etc. but is bogus.

Rather, a lot simply depends on me looking at careful results, using measurements, calipers, etc.

3. Nonetheless, I still do feel jealous. Some people genuinely can diet but retain energy, lose fat (not just water, muscle glycogen, etc.).

I saw those on IF and KETO do it. I wish I could, too. Perhaps it is all wishful thinking.
 
ucimigrate said:
For some reason, I have always failed at ketosis diets.

It takes so long to get into ketosis, I never lose much weight while in ketosis, and I have the worst fatigue while in it.

1. For me to show those ketones, using the albeit flawed method of Ketostix, it takes six days of ZERO carbs to do so.
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You understand that to show ketones on a Ketostix it means you are taking in too many calories right? You're urinating out the excess ketones - which means there is more fat being converted to ketones than your body is using for energy. At most you should show at the low end. If you show medium or high, you're eating too much fats. Also you have to be really careful with protein intake, as that can keep you out or throw you out of ketosis via gluconeogenesis. 100g of extra proteins can turn into 50g of glucose.
 
ucimigrate said:
Thanks.

1. I understand the principal: I need to look at my individual situation, my individual history, and see what works for my individual self.

Doing what another person did is a world of difference.

2. I agree, this is easier said than done. Many charlatans saying "functional medicine" etc. do that. The field claims to use tests to personalize medicine, etc. but is bogus.

Rather, a lot simply depends on me looking at careful results, using measurements, calipers, etc.

3. Nonetheless, I still do feel jealous. Some people genuinely can diet but retain energy, lose fat (not just water, muscle glycogen, etc.).

I saw those on IF and KETO do it. I wish I could, too. Perhaps it is all wishful thinking.
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One of the easiest ways to be unhappy is to compare yourself to others. Focus on being better then yourself overtime and before you know it you will be leaps and bounds better then you are now.
 
I have been doing it for over a decade and early-on, after a cheat day, there are a few things that would help me get into ketosis quicker. After 6 months to a year of doing it, these shortcuts became unnecessary. My body adapted, I was able to get back into ketosis in a few days or a week without exercise. This lifestyle change has produced amazing results for me. The only time I lack energy is when I eat carbs on a cheat day and even then, its only if they come from processed sources containing HFCS.

The lack of energy is inherent in starting a keto-based diet for the first few weeks. If your judge of utilizing this long term is getting into ketosis quicker, here is what I tried.

Assuming a cheat day(s) ended on Sunday:
1. Higher rep (12+) full upper body workout Monday; higher rep full lower body workout Tuesday. Hit every muscle group, either individually or through compound exercises. This is meant to assist in depleting muscle glycogen stores. You could try doing it all on Monday, cardio Tuesday, but I saw no benefit from it personally, and it was much more difficult.
2. High fat (coconut oil is what I use, added to my coffee, protein drink) Mon - Wed, no carbs (avoid as best as possible, aim for < 20 g/day), which means avoiding whole milk with your protein shake, nuts, etc. Stuff you could normally consume in moderation once you are in ketosis.
3. Keep protein "relatively" low. EasyEJL pointed it out about gluconeogenesis. It delayed me a few times when I opted for lower fat cuts of meat or higher protein. I never measured macros, but if I estimated, I'd say 70% of more of calories came from fat as a keto kickstarter.
4. OTC glucose disposal agents. Metformin would help here too, OTC's to a lesser degree.
5. Avoid all foods with sugar alcohols or equivalent.

Remember to drink extra water and stay hydrated even though you will have clear urine. There is a marked change in the the scent of urine when you hit ketosis, in my experience.

Based on what you stated, I would point to 3 being your obstacle. Ultimately, for it to work, it has to be something you can do or at least tolerate long enough to feel better and see results.
 
In fact, because of weight gain due to a medication, I may take Metformin just for general medical reasons. Let us see what effects it has.
 
ucimigrate said:
In fact, because of weight gain due to a medication, I may take Metformin just for general medical reasons. Let us see what effects it has.
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Any possibility the medication you are currently on could be affecting your ability to reach ketosis? Dose it mess with insulin sensitivity, cortisol, etc? I am not asking you to disclose it on a public forum, just to think about the metabolic pathways that could be affected. For example, a keto diet would be beneficial for someone with Type 2 diabetes and would be relatively easy to get into ketosis and see benefits whereas if someone had Addison's disease, it would be difficult and not the ideal "diet".

When I used Metformin, it was years before my recent approach, but for the same purpose (get into ketosis quicker) while doing something similar to Atkins. I followed the Atkins approach to get into Ketosis but never followed the Atkins guidelines for adding carbs back in. It was this approach that laid the framework for what I current do, yet I deduced I could not keep losing a significant amount of fat without taking in a higher amount of fat. In other words, I did not use Metformin over the past 10+ years. I have used other OTC glucose disposal agents earlier on during my current run on this diet. None were as good as Metformin, but I did not need Metformin because I was able to get back into keto quickly after a scheduled cheat day(s).
 
I don't care who your friends are, if they are losing 21 pounds in 12 days, there are some reasons:

1. They may have cancer and should be checked out.

2. They are using drugs and even at that I can only think of a few that would be that effective when combined with an effective diet.

3. They are extremely large - over 300 pounds - and lost a lot of water weight.

4. They are not eating at all, and are doing a crazy amount if exercise.

21 pounds = 73,500 calories if it was actual fat loss. That is more than a 6,000 calorie/day deficit over 12 days. Michael Phelps eating nothing and training normally may be able to achieve that, in theory...although in reality there is no way he could perform his routine while starving. If you or any of your friends could burn 4,000 calories a day over their maintenence, they would not need to lose 21 pounds. They would already be in good shape.

You don't go from being 21 pounds over weight to doing thousands of calories in exercise per day very easily.

Even if half of that was water weight it would be a 3000 calorie/day deficit...which would require no food intake and 1,000 calories/day of exercise...unless they were very large.

I think the issue is your expectations. There is no magical diet. Weight loss is going to be slow. 1 pound per week is a good goal and will require some reasonable suffering. 2 pounds per week is pretty fast and will require a good amount of suffering. 3 pounds per week is extreme and will require a lot of suffering.

When I was eating 600-800 calories/day and doing an additional 500 calories/day on a bike and weight lifting I was losing 3-3.5 pounds a week. The suffering was real. It required a bit of insanity on my part. There was no magic or comfort in it at all.

No diet is going to be easy and produce extreme fat loss. You need to decide where you are and what road you want to take.
 
Actually, the 3500 calories per lb is for WEIGHT loss, and it assumes loss of some lean mass. For pure fat loss, it’s a little over 3700 calories per lb.

HIT4ME said:
I don't care who your friends are, if they are losing 21 pounds in 12 days, there are some reasons:

1. They may have cancer and should be checked out.

2. They are using drugs and even at that I can only think of a few that would be that effective when combined with an effective diet.

3. They are extremely large - over 300 pounds - and lost a lot of water weight.

4. They are not eating at all, and are doing a crazy amount if exercise.

21 pounds = 73,500 calories if it was actual fat loss. That is more than a 6,000 calorie/day deficit over 12 days. Michael Phelps eating nothing and training normally may be able to achieve that, in theory...although in reality there is no way he could perform his routine while starving. If you or any of your friends could burn 4,000 calories a day over their maintenence, they would not need to lose 21 pounds. They would already be in good shape.

You don't go from being 21 pounds over weight to doing thousands of calories in exercise per day very easily.

Even if half of that was water weight it would be a 3000 calorie/day deficit...which would require no food intake and 1,000 calories/day of exercise...unless they were very large.

I think the issue is your expectations. There is no magical diet. Weight loss is going to be slow. 1 pound per week is a good goal and will require some reasonable suffering. 2 pounds per week is pretty fast and will require a good amount of suffering. 3 pounds per week is extreme and will require a lot of suffering.

When I was eating 600-800 calories/day and doing an additional 500 calories/day on a bike and weight lifting I was losing 3-3.5 pounds a week. The suffering was real. It required a bit of insanity on my part. There was no magic or comfort in it at all.

No diet is going to be easy and produce extreme fat loss. You need to decide where you are and what road you want to take.
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Good catch HIT4ME, I didn't see that before. It will be good for the OP to keep that in perspective to manage expectations.
 
jrock645 said:
Actually, the 3500 calories per lb is for WEIGHT loss, and it assumes loss of some lean mass. For pure fat loss, it’s a little over 3700 calories per lb.
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The 3500 calories per pound includes some water loss because fat cells in humans are not pure lipids. A pound is 454 grams and a gram of fat has, generally, 9 calories...so a true pound of fat has 4,086 calories. Now, of course that isn't even true (going from memory, this may be a little off) because fats can have various caloric contents based on the actual type of fat, with some having between 6 - 10 calories per gram.

So if you lose a pound of pure human bodyfat, generally it has somewhere around 3500 calories and includes some water content. Another way of looking at it is that a pound of stored human bodyfat will provide roughly 3500 calories for use.

It does not include any lean mass though I don't believe. Unless you have a source? It could be possible....would love to learn.
 
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Screen grab of this from PT course material.

HIT4ME said:
The 3500 calories per pound includes some water loss because fat cells in humans are not pure lipids. A pound is 454 grams and a gram of fat has, generally, 9 calories...so a true pound of fat has 4,086 calories. Now, of course that isn't even true (going from memory, this may be a little off) because fats can have various caloric contents based on the actual type of fat, with some having between 6 - 10 calories per gram.

So if you lose a pound of pure human bodyfat, generally it has somewhere around 3500 calories and includes some water content. Another way of looking at it is that a pound of stored human bodyfat will provide roughly 3500 calories for use.

It does not include any lean mass though I don't believe. Unless you have a source? It could be possible....would love to learn.
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jrock645 said:
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Screen grab of this from PT course material.
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I can buy that fat cells have some small protein component, and that is interesting.

I want to not be offensive here, but that reference does not strike me as credible even a little bit. His lack of mastery of the English language suggests that most people call fat cells, "adipose tissue" which is a silly English mistake.

But then he starts off saying a kilo of adipose tissue has 9,441 calories, but never mentions how he came up with that, and then states fat cells are only 87% triglyceride (fine) and jumps to a kilo having 8,260 calories. The number of mathematical errors in this string is astounding.

First, a kilo is roughly 2.2 pounds. 1 pound of fat, as stated before is 454 grams. 9 * 454 = 4,086 calories.

He states that "text books" usually claim a kilo of fat has 7000 calories. I would love to see that text book. 3,500 x 2.2 = 7,700 calories.

Using the pure fat math above, 2 pounds of fat, thus, has 8,172 calories. I am guessing he rounded to a pound having 4,080 cals and he doubled it and messed up the math saying it is 8260 when it should have been 8160. Ok a small math mistake.

He states 87% is the actual caloric content....which would be 3,550.5 calories.

Except a kilo, as stated, is 2.2 pounds, not 2 pounds...so we would be looking at 7,811 calories per kilo using his rough estimate of 87%.

But basically if his math were right he is talking about the estimate really being off by 51 calories per pound, as an estimate. And he doesn't provide any evidence as to where he got the 87% which sounds like an estimate on his part, especially since water content will fluctuate, etc.

Any way you cut it, whoever wrote that doesn't have a firm enough grasp on English, math or the concepts involved to be used as any sort of reference.
 
HIT4ME said:
I can buy that fat cells have some small protein component, and that is interesting.

I want to not be offensive here, but that reference does not strike me as credible even a little bit. His lack of mastery of the English language suggests that most people call fat cells, "adipose tissue" which is a silly English mistake.

But then he starts off saying a kilo of adipose tissue has 9,441 calories, but never mentions how he came up with that, and then states fat cells are only 87% triglyceride (fine) and jumps to a kilo having 8,260 calories. The number of mathematical errors in this string is astounding.

First, a kilo is roughly 2.2 pounds. 1 pound of fat, as stated before is 454 grams. 9 * 454 = 4,086 calories.

He states that "text books" usually claim a kilo of fat has 7000 calories. I would love to see that text book. 3,500 x 2.2 = 7,700 calories.

Using the pure fat math above, 2 pounds of fat, thus, has 8,172 calories. I am guessing he rounded to a pound having 4,080 cals and he doubled it and messed up the math saying it is 8260 when it should have been 8160. Ok a small math mistake.

He states 87% is the actual caloric content....which would be 3,550.5 calories.

Except a kilo, as stated, is 2.2 pounds, not 2 pounds...so we would be looking at 7,811 calories per kilo using his rough estimate of 87%.

But basically if his math were right he is talking about the estimate really being off by 51 calories per pound, as an estimate. And he doesn't provide any evidence as to where he got the 87% which sounds like an estimate on his part, especially since water content will fluctuate, etc.

Any way you cut it, whoever wrote that doesn't have a firm enough grasp on English, math or the concepts involved to be used as any sort of reference.
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i think you just attack the credibility of anyone you dont agree with.
 
jrock645 said:
i think you just attack the credibility of anyone you dont agree with.
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Eh well, I posted something and deleted it because I am going to spend more time thinking about it and trying to see how it may work, rather than discount it too soon.
 
So, after some further thought, I think that I actually agree with a lot of what Menno proposes - just not his reasoning for getting their. Frankly, as stated in the post above, his math is often wrong, his logic has flaws, and he has contradictions throughout his writing that he either isn't aware of, or doesn't care to fix.

Having said that, I agree that you can gain muscle while losing fat, and gain fat while losing muscle, and and thus lose weight while gaining fat, etc. At least in theory.

What I take exception with, especially since he keeps trying to sound smart by invoking the laws of thermodynamics, is the idea that you can gain weight in a deficit - other than water weight. I mean, sure I can gain weight in a deficit - I can drink more water, I can put on a shirt and pants and some shoes, I can carry a backpack.

Upon reviewing his website, he constantly confounds water weight with muscle weight. He either doesn't grasp the difference in the situations he uses, or he is just being disingenuous. Or both.

I CAN mathematically come up with a situation where you can, theoretically lose weight in a deficit; which is what he is proposing - and that is that a pound of fat has 3500 calories and 15% water, while a pound of muscle is closer to 75-80% water and about 15-20% protein. So, only accounting for calories and a direct 100% conversion, you would require, let's say 90 grams of protein or 360 calories worth of protein + water to gain a pound of muscle and a pound of fat could thus provide the caloric need to build around 9 pounds of muscle in that scenario.

So, on the really high level, you could gain 9 pounds of muscle while losing 1 pound of fat - for a net gain of 8 pounds - if you were eucaloric and you drank sufficient water.

However, as Menno points out in other areas, you would have to get the nitrogen in order to build the protein from protein - you can't get it from fat.

So lets say you burn 2500 calories/day, eat 2400 calories per day and 1800 of those calories (75%) are from protein - that's 450 grams of protein per day.

If, for some reason, you could get your body to use more than typical of that 450 grams of protein for actual protein synthesis (like steroids) - and break down fat in order to make up for the caloric deficit and to compensate for the protein sparing - then maybe the math itself can play out (although Menno's math is still way off and just wrong).

In other words, if I actually use, say, 300 grams of the 450 grams for protein synthesis - and replace the 1200 calories of protein with 1200 calories of stored bodyfat - then I will lose 1/3 of a pound of fat roughly, and likely have enough actual material to build a pound of muscle if you add in 0.8 pounds of water. The net of this will be that I've gained 0.66 pounds and was in a 100 calorie deficit. Yes, I gained weight in a deficit. The impossible is possible.

Except, there are a number of issues with this. One is, the synthesis of protein requires an enormous amount of energy. Just maintaining your nitrogen balance likely accounts for 20-25% or more of your daily TDEE. So you would be increasing your TDEE just by building the protein, which would mean you would need to burn more fat...which would be more weight lost so that would bring the increase your actual deficit and also reduce the amount of weight gained. If you could even trick your body into doing this.

Further, the energy costs of mobilizing body fat need to be accounted for, which would further increase your deficit and decrease the weight gain.

Another issue that comes to mind is that, if you're in a deficit, ATP levels will be lower - and this increases AMPK and this signaling makes it very hard to synthesize proteins. It certainly isn't a situation that would get your body to respond by conserving proteins and building more muscle with it.

I'm not saying it's 100% wrong, just that it's unlikely and I'm not really sure it's at all right. Honestly, I've had some similar theories between fat and carb conversion that would lead to the idea that burning fats is actually not a very good way to lose bodyfat, and thus things like keto diets are counter-productive.

I'm trying to see some way that Menno's ideas can work, and they might be there - but he can't explain them sufficiently and his math is a mess, and he is flat out wrong about some things.

I do take issue with his "proof" being a sole example of a person who had a dexa scan and he is claiming the person gained 6+ pounds of muscle in a month. Well, if they did, we can suspect steroids right off the bat. But what I really suspect is that he is being dishonest about the fact that dexa scans don't measure muscle mass - they measure bone mass, fat mass and everything else (water, proteins) is lumped into the same category. So, if I get a dexa scan right now and then drink a gallon or two of water without peeing, and don't eat anything before I go back tomorrow and get another scan, I will skew my fat mass down slightly (more water throws off the scan) and dramatically increase my "muscle mass" in his eyes because the water weight is not differentiated from muscle weight.
 
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